The inner critic

Who’s the inner critic and why talk about it?

The inner critic is a part of you who is always active and influences your life without you paying attention to it.  It’s a sort of villain which doubts your actions, creates guilt and sabotages your full potential and your next great life.  This is why it is so important to talk about it.  As we go over the exercise below, you are going to feel uncomfortable at times but trust me, the house needs to be washed and we are going to do it together.  Don’t worry about it and hold my hand while we ride the storm.

The moment of truth/The exercise

 I am going to ask you to do an exercise now.  You will need a sheet of paper, a pencil and a lot of courage to actually get it done.  Draw yourself in the middle of the page.  It doesn’t need to be an accurate representation of yourself.  It can be an avatar of yourself or a cartoon like version of yourself.  From your drawing, draw 6 thought bubbles coming out of it.  In these bubbles, you are going to write down all the negative thoughts that you tell yourself every day or have been telling yourself for a long time.

Possible Categories of thoughts

Since it can be actually hard to do it alone, I am going to give you some categories and possible negative thoughts from these categories.  Please take the ones which you can relate to and modify them as per the emotions you feel as you read them.  My advice is to actually do it with all your heart and let some tears, anger or frustration come out.  It’s all part of the process.

Most common negative thoughts

Time related

There isn’t enough time

Life moves so fast that I can’t keep up

Life is frantic and uncontrollable

I have too much to do

Critical thoughts about myself

I am totally inadequate

I should be more smart, attractive, successful or rich

I am not worthy of success in life

I should be more like that person in my life

Thoughts about the world

The world is an awful place

The world is brutal and uncaring

People are the worst and cannot be trusted

There is no place for kindness in this world

No one can be trusted in this world

No one cares or loves me

I give myself too much and never get the love back

Thoughts about my actions and past

I am a failure

I didn’t achieve and I am pathetic

I should have listened to my wife/husband/parents/boss/friends and not do this

Thoughts about lack of purpose

I don’t know what I am doing

Where am I going with my life?

I feel like I am getting nowhere

What’s the point of doing anything?  Nothing is fair anyway.

Interpreting others’ love and appreciation

No one loves me or cares for me

My partner/family member/friend is thoughtless and inconsiderate

I am so lonely

I will never find real love

Nobody cares about me

My life has no purpose

I don’t exist to people

The outcome

After that you have done this exercise, you may well realize how much junk you keep telling yourself the whole day.  Our experiences are shaped by our thoughts and your current life actually represents the thoughts you are having right now or is a result of your past thoughts. Now, all thoughts shouldn’t be replaced by sugar coated ones because this make us deluded.  However, your thoughts shouldn’t put you in victim mode as well.  The truth is that if you believe deep inside you, that people use you to their advantage,  That is the kind of people you will attract in your life.  If you take full responsibility of your success or failure and take action, you will be surprised by how powerful you will feel and you will be struck by the kind of people who will enter your life.

What to do next?

You draw yourself again on a fresh page now and write down the kind of thoughts you will tell yourself so that you live a life you really want to live. If the thoughts are completely trash, change them completely.  However, if some have some truth to them, you may rephrase them.  For example, “no one loves me” can be thrown away while “I have too much to do” can be phrased as “I am going to prioritize my heavy workload so that I do things which actually produce results”.  My friend, you have so much potential.  Trust me.  Don’t grow old and be regretful about the past.  Take action now.

 Lots of love,

Geerish.